Friday, January 31, 2014

I visited the Her Interactive offices today. Just thought I'd visit them and thank them for sponsoring the next show. I showed my love by leaving everyone a few notes. Hopefully that will encourage them in the next few months to do more excellent work.

Anyways, Little Jackalope left her computer on. Looks like an easy hack. Her computer had this up on the screen:

The Flying Cow Productions

I fully approve! I may need to get a coffee mug so that I can totally own the look of importance. I like looking important. Plus I just like cows. And aliens. Aliens are great. Coffee is great.

There was something even better up on LJ's screen, something creepily UMAZING...and although it looked finished, I don't think she is going to upload it anytime soon. Her calendar has a few dates in February and March circled. Maybe I shouldn't say what it is...it could be a secret. I have a good reputation of keeping secrets.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

I can't talk long, we are working on a few projects here and some involve large files, so if I have a few programs open and running these at the same time...it could freeze, or worse: crash. In a nutshell, we showed off The Silent Spy today to a visitor with a video camera, and I've been working on images for the merchandise store, and I overheard something about illustrations and captions from one of the artists...

Anyways, I gotta run! Computer is doing something weird.. and I just lost my emails...

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Here at the Her Interactive office we are busy at work with our New Zealand-located adventure. The artists are working hard on finishing up some important cinematics as well as some textures for the environments. Th production team is fixing the logic in game play as well as puzzles, and they have already begun heavy testing and writing up several bug reports (glitches and things). It's rather quiet at my end, though. There isn't much we have ready to announce or even show you because the team is still working on the game.

Artist's Row. They are all quiet, working hard on the environments!

Today I snuck into the latest game build (we build out a game each day with the latest updates and fixes) to start playing. Of course, it crashed a few times when I was trying to solve a sheep puzzle. But that's to be expected at this point. I at least know how to get back to the part of the game I was just at and start from there.

Anyways, I need to start compiling information about our game to start the ESRB process. I have just finished working on some new images for our merchandise store, so that should be up sometime this week. Stay tuned! I will show you the new images soon!

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Hey all, I was out sick yesterday. :( But now I'm back a ready to dive into the latest Nancy Drew game we are currently working on.

While I get to see everything and play the game as we work on it, just about all of you are eagerly awaiting more information. Don't worry, we will hide clues here and there... and of course tease you as we go. Because we like to keep secrets. And... well... we also like to reveal our secrets, too! All in good time.

As many of our fans wait, they are enjoying the latest mystery and everything about it: The Silent Spy. Check out Samantha's fan video below. If you were not aware, you get a free digital copy of the sheet music to "Kate's Theme" track when you purchase The Silent Spy soundtrack. Samantha teaches you how to play it on the piano here:

Thanks for sharing this Samantha! This is my favorite track and someday would like to play this myself!

Friday, January 24, 2014

One of the fun things about playing a Nancy Drew game are "second chances". While they are very appreciated at the times where you fail at something or do something wrong, these second chance sequences can also be entertaining.

Have you ever purposefully made a mistake or purposefully done something wrong in the game just to see what would happen? A few examples would be these:

1. Curse of Blackmoor Manor: Down in the conservatory where the plants are, if you click on the giant carnivorous plant more than once.
2. Message in a Haunted Mansion: in the front hall, up on the staircase, you choose to unravel the chandelier rope for no particular reason.
3. The Final Scene: up on the balcony, when you look over the ledge to try to get something that is slightly out of reach.
4. Danger on Deception Island: Making a bad sandwich and giving it to Katie when she says she is hungry.

I love this moment:

The reaction I receive when I did something awful... is priceless. What is your favorite second chance sequence?

Instead of a weekend puzzle this weekend, I have another "tease" for you to ponder over and discuss among yourselves. It has to do with our next game, and will also be going into the merchandise store once I am finished formatting it:

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

No one is ever too old for Nancy Drew! I often see fans admit their age and then feel guilty for being a Nancy Drew fan. It's like they think they are too old for Nancy Drew or something, or that the Nancy Drew games are for young girls.

I beg to differ. :)

Our games are rated E or E10+ because they are "appropriate" for all ages to view, and when we put "for ages 10 and up" on the box it's because of the difficulty level, not because it is meant only for teenagers.

We try to appeal to the general Nancy Drew fan, trying our very best to stay true to the qualities of Nancy from the 1930s as well as keep Nancy updated and fun for today. Nancy Drew is not limited to players' ages. Many moms and grandmothers grew up with Nancy Drew books, and now their daughters are playing the games. These daughters are many different ages. However, you may be amazed at how old a majority of our players are!

I'm seeing waaaaay more fans in the age range of 20-30-years-old than another age group of fans. (This range includes me, too.) They are everywhere; on Facebook, the message boards, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, emails, and also among people around me!

This makes me proud to be a Nancy Drew fan! These ladies (and men) know how much fun and challenging the games are, how rich the story and characters are, and they won't stop playing because they may think that Nancy is for little kids. GO FANS!! Playing as Nancy Drew is totally fun! Nothing stops us from solving a mystery!

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

I thought a part of the preview for The Shattered Medallion had some fun art in it. For that reason alone, I thought it would be really cool to have that cow and alien in the merchandise store, especially on a t-shirt!

I'm in the early stages of gathering this art. Once I have it all, I will begin to format the image for every merchandise item in the store. I need to make sure the image will fit appropriately without getting cut off or blocked by holes in the cell phone cases, corner edges of the boxes, or can squeeze onto a bookmark, for example. It may take a while...

Monday, January 20, 2014

It's another one of my favorites. When you hear the whisper "I seeeeeeee yooooooooou" on the staircase and when you look at just the right moment at the girl portrait on the wall...she blinks. This is perhaps one of the scariest moments playing a Nancy Drew game for the first time! The scare factor has left since that first play-through, but I will always remember how on-edge I was playing it.

As for the weekend puzzle, it looks like you have solved it! You use [binary or ASCII] code. The magnifying glasses indicate a digit in the column. The first column from the right is the "1", then next to it is "2", then "4" and "8" and the last one (first on the left) is "16". Simply do the math to find each row's number value and then then identify the letter in the alphabet.

You should get this: [Behind the Cameras] which indicates two different things. That's all I will say!

Friday, January 17, 2014

Today we went to a middle school to answer questions and chat with students. It was a S.T.E.M career day for the students to learn more about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Since we are a gaming company, about half of what we do involves programing, scripting and coding and it's all with computers.

Here's our little display table:

The students had lots of questions and I was excited to get to share with them about Nancy Drew and making games!

Thursday, January 16, 2014

I have a friend who plays Nancy Drew games only once, and once completed it, never returns to play it again.

I'm different. I replay Nancy Drew games over and over and over again. XD I really like playing it in (almost) different sequences, exploring rooms at different times or try to get different answers from characters. I remember replaying The Final Scene just to try racing against the kidnapper's moves when he/she takes Maya around the building. I'd always try to get to her hiding location before the culprit did.

In later games, it's fun to replay in attempts to get all of the end-game meta awards and trophies, as well as purchase all foods and souvenirs in the processes.

Do you replay Nancy Drew games? What do you do differently each time you play them?

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Check it out! We have released early art from The Shattered Medallion today in our merchandise store!

The official TV show logo, Pacific Run: New Zealand is now ready to be designed on T-shirts, posters, mugs and more. I'm planning on getting something for myself, too, but I can't decide on a silver water bottle or a T-shirt...

I already have a long list of other images I'm getting ready for the store. Most are from The Shattered Medallion and involve a lot of things I'm SUPER excited to put on T-shirts!

You'll just have to come back and see later what cool things we have hiding up our sleeves for the future!

Monday, January 13, 2014

Hooray for Mondays! Another week to do awesome things at Her Interactive has just begun. For me, this will be working on formatting this image below for the Merchandise store. (I'm almost done.)

I did get a little distracted hunting through old archive files. In which I found this awesome pencil sketch! Check it out, do you recognize this friendly face?

As for the weekend puzzle, simply use the [alt code] to discover the message. To do this, open up a document where you can type into it. Hold down the "Alt" key on your keyboard and type the number provided, then let go of the "Alt" key. You will get this answer: [Off limits area? Not to Nancy!]

Friday, January 10, 2014

Some of us in the office are big football fans and are really excited for our big game tomorrow. It reminded me of how Nancy is also a fan of football in the books, especially since Ned plays at Emerson College. Go Emerson!!

Thursday, January 9, 2014

...to discuss something very important concerning the game we are currently working on. We pretty much brushed up on what the game is about, important elements, the characters and how they behave, the environments, themes, and a few puzzles. Why? Well... that's kind of a secret. However, if you study my past blogs from around this type of season, you might be able to figure out what we were really talking about in the conference room...

Here's another tease: I'm starting some SUPER early work on a project or two here...

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

We have been working on The Shattered Medallion for a while now. The artists have a big deadline this Friday, an animator is animating the Artist and the Production team has already assembled some puzzles. We are testing these puzzles now. In fact, as I type, this very moment some people are testing a second round of puzzles in our testing lab.

This is one of the doodles I drew last year, around the same time we were testing out Ghost of Thornton Hall. Has it really been a year since we started testing GTH? Wow, time flies!

After I finish up this post, I'm diving into the latest game build to see how the game is functioning...and perhaps try out those puzzles!

"The Artist is coming..."

By the way, we have a Twitter Quote contest happening right now! Head over for a chance to win a digital guide!

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Often do we get scared when something spooky happens or something creepy appears in a game, but then there is that thrill feeling that we experience in wanting to be scared, and wanting to see something so fascinating! I can't speak for everyone, but some people (myself included) enjoy seeing "ghosts" and crazy things happen before our eyes.

Lately, it's been a little quiet here at Her Interactive. The artists, however have a big date coming up soon where they need to finish a lot of pieces for the next game. I just might sneak into the files to see what they are up to. I believe I saw a picture of some sea life on one artist's computer as I was walking by...

Anyways, it looks like many of you were quick to solve the weekend puzzle, congrats! Of course, all you do is translate the flags to letters. The cipher is [Maritime Flags]. The answer you get is [Solar System Shirt]. Here's what I meant by it:

I'm going to ask our artist for the original art file so that (someday) I can make a similar design available in our merchandise store...

Friday, January 3, 2014

First things first: just giving you all a head's up about our message boards this weekend. Some minor maintenance will be happening on the boards for a bit, so the forums will be temporarily down. You won't see any changes at your end after the work is done, so no worries!

How's the start of your new year? Did you set any goals for yourself in 2014? I sure did. I like "goals" better than "resolutions". It feels less binding and more adventurous of a word. Anyways, I'd really want to add more images to the merchandise store! And make more videos for YouTube! And do...some...Nancy Drew...stuff...? We shall see! I know of many exciting things to look forward to, and here is a clue to one of them:

You sleuths are all pros by know, so solving this one should be a piece of cake! ;)

Thursday, January 2, 2014

We are back from our Christmas/New Year holiday break! I hope everyone had an excellent Christmas and enjoyed lots of time with family and friends, along with many tasty treats! (I sure did, and thank you for the well-wishes, too!) Here's a special greeting from us to you:

What new and exciting things do you wish for Nancy this year? Any places you want her to visit? Anything you'd like her to do? Perhaps a few characters you'd like her to meet? (~.^)

I can already see lots of potentially exciting things that will be happening this year, and some will come sooner than you think, too! (Especially for the hard-core fan community).

Also, the winner for the laptop contest was randomly selected from all participating entries. Thanks everyone for participating!

Looks like we had several birthday requests come in while we were out of the office!